Discounted USB Weather Station

Maplins are offering the "Fine Offset" weather station for £59.99 (usually £100 I think).
http://www.maplin.co.uk/usb-touchscreen-wireless-weather-forecaster-228825
I also found it discounted to £49.99 here, but its not a company I know:
http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/Weather-Station/Pr363242000

Some details of the system in an earlier thread:
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/jwks-tropical-border.36017/page-3#post-459026

Might be worth asking Santa to get you one?

 

I got the maplins one for my birthday...it's very good if you know how to use it

 

Plugged into your PC? If that's the case I recommend the Sandaysoft > Cumulus software

 

Code for £3 off £30 spend at Maplin AWINDIS4

Or, if you can find something for 1p to add to your basket, £5 off £50 spend at Maplin AWINDIS5

Plus a further 2.5% cashback if visting their website via Quidco.

 

Thanks Kristen....i'll pass that on to my PA

 

I've bought from Clas Ohlson on the web and all went well

 

Ive been on the lookout for something which I can connect to my multimedia PC down by the telly to monitor the temperature outside & out in the greenhouse - has anyone seen a cheapish USB - wireless unit that can have a couple of external sensors ?

 

Definitely not seen one of them :(

What are the extra sensors for? Do you also need Wind & Rain (if not might have alternative suggestion)

 

not really interested in wind & rain, just want to automatically log & chart the temperature outside & in the greenhouse, ideally without having to go out there & fetch remote sensors in to download collected info !

 

If you just want temperature (and perhaps humidity) you could look at the AREXX range. I have two short-range sensors (two "zones" in conservatory) and one long-range sensor in greenhouse (50M away, only glass-window, hedge and greenhouse-glass in line-of-sight between Sensor and Base Station).

My greenhouse sensor drops out quite a bit (but not for too long - so its still possible to see what the shape of the graph probably would have been; bit annoying though).

If I bought again I would get their long range sensor that has a remote probe - it has the same transmitter as the long-range one I have, but I would be able to put the transmitter outside the greenhouse, and dangle the probe into the greenhouse, which I think would help transmission. If you have further you can also get a "booster"

The base station will log data when the PC is off, provided that it has power (transformer not included, as not required when connected to the USB port).

The instructions say that on some computers the start-up signal will cause the base station to think the data has been downloaded, and the base station will then wipe the data; this doesn't happen on mine. Either way I think its poor programming. It would be better if the base station used a round-robin buffer, so that it always stored the "more recent XX,000" entries, and then the PC could ask for everything since whatever is the most recent value it has safely recorded. So its a bit "amateur", but you may be happy with those limitations.



Review of my Weather Station, some AREXX Temperature Sensors and some USB sensors (written for another forum)

I have a Weather Station, made by Fine Offset. It has a set of sensors on a short pole to mount somewhere outside, that takes a couple of batteries, and transmits wirelessly to an internal base unit which you can plug into the USB port on your computer. The outside sensors measure temperature, humidity, wind speed/direction and rainfall (rate & amount) [Note: No sunshine hours / UV sensors] . The indoor unit provides sensors for [indoor] temperature / humidity, and a display panel (although the backlight is poor on the model I have, supposedly improved on later models). This unit has the ability to record readings (for quite a long time - perhaps a month?) on a round-robin basis [once the memory becomes full the oldest values are overwritten by the newest ones]. When it is connected to the PC then a program on your computer can download any historical values, and then request values on an ongoing basis [whilst there is power to the PC]. If power goes off the base unit will still record values to its memory.

I have carried the [battery operated] base unit out to my conservatory and used it to "log" the temperature in the conservatory (given that the temperature in my house stays within a couple of degrees during the winter, thanks to my central heating, the base unit's ability to record temperature is otherwise a bit wasted!) I've then carried it back to the computer for the "indoor temperature" data to be downloaded to the PC.

The base unit isn't waterproof per se, but for occasional experiments its handy. I also put it in a small poly-tunnel, inside my unheated conservatory, and put my 400W Metal Halide lamp in it and recorded how warm the lamp kept it when it came on overnight. That saved me buying / installing a heater in the tunnel icon_thumleft

The outdoor sensors need to be within wireless range of the base unit. As with all these wireless devices they don't go through very much brickwork. I've mounted my outside sensors so that there is only a window between them and the base unit. I expect that a bit of range between the two is fine, but several walls probably wouldn't be.

I am not aware that you can add additional sensors to this model. Certainly you can to the posher Davies brand.

The Easy Weather software that comes with it is pretty useless. It does let you program the base unit (for example you can set an alarm if outside temperature falls to 2C, and change the frequency with which sensor readings are logged). The [free] Cumulus software is much better.

If you want to record multiple temperature values then I reckon you've got two choices. The first I tried was some sensors, and a base unit, from Arexx


http://www.arexx.com/templogger/html/en/info.htm

Arexx make a number of sensors (principally Temperature and/or Humidity). They are aimed at the hobbyist, so cheap and cheerful. There is a sensor with a more powerful transmitter available [which I have], and also relay stations (which I haven't tried) which should solve long distance transmission.

I've got 3 sensors. 2 ordinary ones in my conservatory zones 1 and 2, and the stronger transmitter model in my greenhouse. The greenhouse is about 50M away, my home-office window, a hedge, and the greenhouse glass in-between. It drops out quite a lot (the shape of the graph is still obvious, but I can get very few readings over a period of 6 hours, and then 100% for 18 hours ... I have no idea why). If I move the sensor into my further greenhouse, which is immediately behind the first one, so only 12 feet further away, I get no readings at all. I have also found that the greenhouse is consistently 1C lower at night than my weather station, and I suspect that the greenhouse / vegetable patch is inherently colder ... so I need another, outdoor, sensor near the greenhouse to get comparative readings. I reckon this game can be played with any number of sensors and for any amount of time !!

By the by, it is worth standing all the sensors together and logging them for 12 / 24 hours to check that they are all reasonably close. They will probably all be within 0.5C, so my greenhouse being 1C colder than weather station may just be "tolerance" I'm afraid

Supposedly you can have up to 60 sensors, maybe more, attached to the base station. The base station will log sensor readings when the PC is off (provided it has power, via a transformer); unlike the Fine Offset base station the Arexx one doesn't take batteries (but the remote, wireless, sensors take a couple of AAA's each).

NOTE: The manual says that at startup the PC sends an initialisation signal to the USB port, and on some PCs this can wipe the memory in the Arexx base unit, thus they recommend that the Arexx is not connected to the PC when you boot it up, but is plugged in post-boot. My PC seems to work fine in this regard.

Data is recorded to downloaded to the PC into some sort of proprietary data files, so you have to do an Export when you want to get the data in CSV to use elsewhere. Bit of a hassle. The software is a bit flakey too. Every time I reboot some, but not all, of the sensors revert to their default names, rather than the more friendly names I have assigned. It also seems to have picked up some other sensors too (but not been able to get any data from them). Possibly my wireless central heating thermostats [which also will not transmit through more than one wall, so are so close to the boiler that they might as well be WIRED :(]

So I'm now moving to Solution #2. I have bought, from Clas Ohlson, some of their USB Recording devices.


http://www.clasohlson.com/uk/USB-Temperature-and-Humidity-Data-Logger/Pr364208000

The ones they have on offer, at present, log both Temperature and Humidity - which is a bit of a bonus as normally the dual-sensor ones (including humidity) are quite a bit more expensive. I choose this model in part because the battery lasts a year. The really cheap USB loggers that I have seen have a battery life of only a month (and appear to use the "button" type batteries, which seems quite extravagant to me)

You plug these into the USB port, use the provided software to configure them (how often to log the temperature etc) and then put them where you want them. No need for them to be within wireless range. Then periodically you collect them, plug them into the USB port, download the data, and take them back to their recording location.

This type of recorder has been used, in industry, to record the temperature of chilled goods in transit etc.

Downside is that you don't have a real-time view, which would be important if you want to sound an alarm so that you can run out and light a paraffin heater, for example. Up-side is that the distance to the greenhouse is not important - you could have one of these gadgets in the greenhouse on your allotment

The loggers have a little button which you can press to start recording (so after configuration, when plugged in to your USB port, you can carry them out to the greenhouse, leave them to acclimatise, and then push the button to start recording. Or you could just start them recording immediately, and disregard the first few minutes of bogus temperature readings )

I haven't used these long enough to have formed an opinion as yet.

 

wow ! thanks for that.